Charlenes
by Jessi Noan
Summary: Scotty/Lily; On the drive back from Tennessee, Scotty and Lily talk about Christmas music and Charlenes. Spoilers through season four.


**Title**: Charlenes

**Fandom**: Cold Case

**Pairings**: Lily/Scotty, not necessarily romantic

**Warnings**: Adult language; Adult situations; spoilers through season four, just to be safe

**Genre**: General; Drama

**Rating**: PG-13 or T

**Feedback**: Appreciated.

**Notes**: I have been watching a lot of Cold Case these last few weeks while knitting Christmas presents. I am almost through season four; this story takes place during episode eleven of season four: _The Red and The Blue_, when Lily and Scotty travel to Tennessee to investigate the murder of Truck Sugar.

* * *

The road stretched in each direction, flat and gray. The same six vehicles accelerated and merged in the distance, frequently falling back to accompany the unmarked sedan in its twelve-hour journey northeast to Philly as local patrol units veered onto the highway or Scotty sped up to stay with his cluster. All stretches of highway were the same – completely devoid of personality – just long lanes, miles and miles left to travel. Scotty could feel the itch to take a break whispering at his neck and inching along the backs of his calves. Four hours in wasn't even halfway and he and Lily had agreed on stopping halfway for food and a driver switch.

There had also been promises of the passenger keeping the driver entertained, but they'd run out of casual conversation within the first couple of hours and Detective Rush gazed at the passing greenery in silent contemplation. These were the half-moments, after cases, that Lily would fall back into reflecting and imagining, most often spent in the company of her cats and a well-creased book that remained unread after all her years working homicide. Scotty was privy to very few, but he found himself believing they had only gotten worse, longer and more somber, since George. Part of him – the repressed self-hating part that blamed him for Alyssa and his brother and everyone else he loved and failed - believed she had never recovered from her time trapped in that attic, but the rest of him knew that part was full of shit – that she had simply changed, that she was, for better or worse, a survivor.

She didn't get… co-dependent, like he did. He was the one who needed saving, not her.

His fingers tapped randomly against the wheel, his brief acquaintance with possibly not entirely awful country music doing nothing to endear the unremitting guitar twangs and lost dog lyrics to him. He tried, for a minute, to think of song that could block out the current, "my wife left me and took my fishing boat" complaint, before he realized he really needed to just make Rush hold up her end of the deal.

Without preamble, Scotty uttered the first thing that came to mind. "So, Lil, what ever happened to that guy with the bike?" He couldn't deny that he was curious and she had mentioned him enough times to make the subject open for discussion, right?

But Lily stonewalled him without hesitation. "He left."

"Oh?" He tried for bland interest, but realized he just sounded interested. "Was it because of Joseph?"

Lily's gaze broke from the passenger window and flickered around the car, never attempting to move in his direction while her chin lifting from the heel of her palm before settling again. "Scotty," she murmured, her voice creeping towards pleading.

"Nah, Lil. We're cool." The way he figured, if she could forgive him for the mess he made of their partnership with Christina, he could forgive her for going behind his back to protect a witness – she had, generally, a good read on these things, so he could trust her on that. Not that she was even close to done hearing about the idiocy of her going to a deserted location without back-up, not again, not when she should _know_ better. "Water under the bridge." He flashed a smile her way, which she returned weakly, eyes still not meeting his.

His voice took a teasing edge, drawing the conversation into calmer waters. "So, Lil' Sister, do you think Big Daddy has you on his Christmas card list now?" Lily laughed shortly, smiling for real this time.

"Maybe. Do you think Charlene added you to hers?" Scotty grinned back.

"What's she going to write? 'Thanks for the dance'?"

"I think Jefferies would appreciate that. He does love his country music, after all. He'd be glad to know you've seen the light." Scotty had a feeling, if Lily were less restrained, she would have waved her hands like she was singing a gospel song. As it was, she had merely taken on a pleased, happy look, like a well-fed cat.

"Naw, Lil. We're not telling Jefferies about any dancing."

Lily laughed again. "You might not be, but I'm looking forward to it."

Scotty groaned, wiping a hand over his face and trying to look contrite, the look being ruined by the smirk pulling at his mouth. "Ah, I knew that was going to bite me in the ass."

Lily flicked her hair, sitting up straight and pulling her right foot onto the seat, attempting to stifle her own smirk. "The curse of being a ladies man, right, Valens?"

"You caught me. I can't say no to a pretty woman." Lily just shook her head, fiddling with the frequency knob on the radio. It skipped over three, four, five country stations, one Mariachi tune and settled on a, albeit drawling, Christmas station. "Ah," Scotty inhaled, sucking air between his teeth, "a country Christmas. Two great tastes that taste great together."

Lily looked at him in disbelief. "You can't not-like Christmas music."

"I, uh, can and do."

"Okay, Scotty. I'll bite. What's so bad about it?"

Scotty watched the cars pull away and drift back while Lily watched him, noticing the slight way he pressed his lips together before leaning a fraction her way and launching into his reason, like he was telling her a secret, eyes never wavering from the road.

"When I was a kid – teenager, really - I worked at this store in my neighborhood. It was a part-time job, working clerk and stocking. Worked there all through high school. My boss, he loved Christmas music. Every day after Halloween, he'd have the stuff blaring – _Jingle Bells_, _Ol' Saint Nick_, _Chestnuts Roasting_, all of it - until the day after New Year's." At Lily's scoff and eye roll, he protested, "To this day, whenever I hear _Jingle Bell Rock_, my eye twitches." He pointed to the eye in question, before leaning back into his seat.

Lily nodded, appearing doubtful and amused, before returning her attention to the blurring landscape.

"It was traumatic!"

She fought down her smile and remarked, "obviously," in a decidedly unsympathetic way.

"It was!" Their conversation lulled, Scotty shaking his head and smiling, the cars drifting back along the road. After a few minutes passed, in which the lost dog returned with a present for his master before he was promptly run over and met Jesus, Lily spoke, still gazing out her window.

"My mother - she took us to one of those big department stores – I don't remember which one – a week before Christmas when I was eight or nine. She told us we were going to visit Santa, get presents. She wrapped us up as warm as she could and took us to the nice part of Philly and went into this huge, shining building. Chris started crying when she saw Santa, so we didn't sit on his lap, and we didn't have the money for toys, but it was," she paused, her voice wistful and sad, "it was… beautiful. It was all done up in white and gold decorations with clear lights and it was warm from all the people and there were families everywhere. It felt normal; I could believe we weren't going back to a cold apartment with no food or tree or presents." Again, she paused, reflective, and Scotty waited. "I felt safe." She pulled back from the window, glancing at Scotty before letting her eyes fall. "I never forgot that."

Scotty smiled softly, his voice matching, "that sounds nice, Lil."

"It was." Her nostalgia lasted only a second more, before she visibly forced herself to detach from the memory, like it might burn her if she lingered too long on a child's happiness, clenched her jaw and clipped her voice. "It didn't last, of course. She was drunk before we fell asleep that night and we spent Christmas scraping together dinner."

Quietly, Scotty spoke, "Lil, it's been a long time since then." Lily's face hardened further, etched with a neglected child's desire to be acknowledged, while trying valiantly to pretend she wasn't affected. Trying to regain the upbeat tone of earlier, he smiled crookedly and continued teasingly, "You have a tree this year, courtesy of the captain. Vera even said he was bringing in ornaments, since it being naked was depressing him." A smile shuttered onto her face before it shuttered back off, and Scotty let the conversation drop, promising to himself he would make time to get his partner something for Christmas.

Jesus had brought the dog back and a beige car in their cluster signaled at the off-ramp and disappeared into a gas station.

More dogs, more boats, more trucks and trees and Lily changed the station, then turned the radio off. The itching in Scotty's calves had returned and crawled further up his legs, causing him to squirm in his seat.

As they breached the fifth hour mark, he spoke again. "I might be wrong, you know. Maybe we're not alone."

Lily hummed noncommittally at this, unmoved.

"I just mean," he half-shrugged, "none of us are really lone wolves. We've all got each other, right? Maybe the Charlenes just fill in the holes that the rest of us can't."

Lily sighed. "I don't want a Charlene to fill in the holes with, Scotty. I want the whole thing, love and family and a white picket fence. These one night flings might be okay for you-"

"That ain't it, Lil. They're not okay. I'm just saying maybe that other stuff isn't needed. Our relationships all fizzle out 'cause of the jobs we work, but it's still all of us that come to work. That's not being alone – that's just waking up alone."

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't want to wake up alone."

Scotty cocked a grin. "Like I'm saying, that's what the Charlenes are for."

Lily groaned, despite herself, her fingers pressing her eyes on their way to pinching the bridge of her nose. "Okay, Scotty. Okay." The moment passed and what could have been awkward was only quiet. Lily roused herself at her stomach's growl. "It's my turn to drive now, isn't it? Let's pull off."

"Yeah, sure, Lil." The black, unmarked sedan pulled off the highway and the cluster of companion cars sped off into the distance.

* * *

(For Christmas, Scotty pocketed the plastic fence from his nephew's forgotten barnyard play set and put it around Lily's penholder before she got into work. She snorted and rolled her eyes and left it there for the rest of the week, to the puzzlement of their coworkers.)

**- End -**


End file.
